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Slim by Design: Mindless Eating Solutions for Everyday Life Hardcover – Illustrated, September 23, 2014
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Anyone familiar with Wansink's Mindless Eating knows this is not a typical diet book. Wansink shares his scientific approach to eating, providing insight and information, so we can all make better choices when it comes to food.
The pioneer of the Small Plate Movement, Brian Wansink presents compelling research conducted at the Food and Brand Lab at Cornell University by way of cartoons, drawings, charts, graphs, floor plans, and more. Slim by Design offers innovative ways to make healthy eating mindlessly easy.
- Print length320 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherWilliam Morrow
- Publication dateSeptember 23, 2014
- Dimensions1.3 x 7.3 x 9.1 inches
- ISBN-100062136526
- ISBN-13978-0062136527
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Editorial Reviews
Review
“Backed by 25 years of research and buoyed by its simplicity and no-cost implementation, Wansink’s book may well be the healthy lifestyle Holy Grail for which many are searching.” — Publishers Weekly
“This book is a revelation! Based on proven psychology, it outlines the simple, easy, low-cost things that can be done to fat-proof your home, company break room, grocery store, favorite restaurants, and school cafeteria…Every plant or office manager, school lunch supervisor, restaurateur, and parent should have this book.” — Library Journal (starred review) on Slim by Design
“[Slim by Design] is crammed with ideas to make it easy to eat healthier-without even noticing that you’re making changes. The book is fascinating, and surprisingly lively and funny-this isn’t a dry review of the literature. It’s a fun read.” — Gretchen Rubin, author of The Happiness Project
“Wansink’s hotly anticipated new book, Slim By Design, is packed with research that shows how we can change the way we interact with our environments to make eating healthy a no-brainer.” — Oprah.com
“Slim By Design provides tons of practical and useful tips to help you and your family seamlessly improve your eating habits and make better food choices.” — Parents.com
“[Slim by Design] outlines concrete strategies for designing homes, restaurants, grocery stores, workplaces, and schools in ways that surreptitiously encourage healthy eating habits.” — Slate
“In his new book, Slim by Design, eating-behavior expert Brian Wansink shows us how to get our kitchens working better.” — Houzz.com
“Professor Wansink’s Slim By Design theory is about changing your eating environment to lose weight.” — dailymail.co.uk
From the Back Cover
The Future Is Slim by Design!
In this paradigm-shattering book, leading behavioral economist and food psychologist Brian Wansink—dubbed the "Sherlock Holmes of food" and the "wizard of why"—offers a radical new philosophy for weight loss. The answer isn't to tell people what to do; it's to set up their living environments so that they will naturally lose weight. Using cutting-edge, never-before-seen research from his acclaimed Food and Brand Lab at Cornell University, Wansink reveals how innovative and inexpensive design changes—from home kitchens to restaurants, from grocery stores to schools and workplaces—can make it mindlessly easy for people to eat healthier and make it more profitable for the companies who sell the food).
In Slim by Design, Wansink argues that the easiest, quickest, and most natural way to reverse weight gain is to work with human nature, not against it. He demonstrates how schools can nudge kids to take an apple instead of a cookie, how restaurants can increase profits by selling half-size portions, how supermarkets can double the amount of fruits and vegetables they sell, and how anyone can cut plate refills at home by more than a third. Interweaving drawings, charts, floor plans, and scorecards with new scientific studies and compelling insights that will make you view your surroundings in an entirely fresh way, this entertaining, eye-opening book offers practical solutions for changing your everyday environment to make you, your family, and even your community slim by design.
About the Author
Brian Wansink, Ph.D., is a professor at and the director of the famed Cornell University Food and Brand Lab, where he is a leading expert in eating behavior. He is the author of Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think, as well as three professional books and more than two hundred peer-reviewed journal articles. He was the 2011–12 president of the Society for Nutrition Education, and in 2007 he was presidentially appointed as the USDA executive director in charge of the Dietary Guidelines for 2010 and the Food Guide Pyramid (MyPyramid.gov). Wansink lives with his family in Ithaca, New York, where he enjoys both French food and French fries.
Product details
- Publisher : William Morrow; Illustrated edition (September 23, 2014)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 320 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0062136526
- ISBN-13 : 978-0062136527
- Item Weight : 1.55 pounds
- Dimensions : 1.3 x 7.3 x 9.1 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #198,568 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #275 in Food Science (Books)
- #1,397 in Weight Loss Diets (Books)
- #21,697 in Politics & Social Sciences (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the authors

Although I'm a born and raised Midwesterner, I've spent much of my life on both coasts and as a Professor in 3 Ivy League schools. I enjoy goofing around with my 3 silly daughters, playing bad tenor sax in a rock band, and performing semi-bad stand-up comedy.
But as a convicted behavioral scientist, I am obsessed with helping empower people to slim down, eat better, and to do the same for their entire family. I create simple tools to help people eat better effortlessly at home, at work, when eating out, and at the grocery store. My approach is a painless, scalable, meet-people-where-they-are way to lose weight without using the word "can't." I love French food and French fries, and I love Cabernet and Diet Coke. We just need to help our favorite foods fit better -- and mindlessly -- in our lives.
My earlier best seller, Mindless Eating, changed the way dieters ate. Slim by Design is the next step. Based on 25 years of our research, it gives easy tools each of us can use to lose weight. Better yet, the same ideas can help our families lose weight, and can even help our communities. Slim by Design is my most important work, and I hope it can inspire and empower you to improve your health and your life.
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Now here's the formal version of my bio I was supposed to post.
"Brian Wansink is a behavioral economist and food psychologist, perhaps the foremost expert in changing what and how much people eat. He helped introduce the 100-calorie pack and he launched the Smarter Lunchroom Movement. He published his ideas in the groundbreaking book Mindless Eating. In it, he shows people how to eat less and eat better without conscious thought.
He has now launched the Slim by Design Movement to help us eat better. The movement connects us to our companies, restaurants, grocery stores, and schools to help.
Wansink is Director of the famed Cornell Food and Brand Lab and is the former White House-appointed Director in charge of the 2010 Dietary Guidelines. He has a Ph.D. from Stanford University. He is also a former amateur stand-up comic and he plays saxophone in a rock band and a jazz quartet. He has three young daughters and lives in Ithaca, New York.

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After over a decade of working with people to help them lose weight, I have come to the conclusion that almost no one wants to lose weight. That said, it is also true that almost everyone wants to weigh less but, I’ve never met anyone who is excited about what they need to do in order to get there.
While on the surface, the problem seems simple. If you could just eat less and exercise more, you would be skinny. Most people already know that and yet they remain overweight and frustrated. The real problem is that the human mind, programmed by habits and driven by emotion does not always respond the way we want and this is particularly true for food.
Dr. Wansink is the only person to consider the question, “Is there a way to lose weight without even thinking about it?” Amazingly, he discovered, there is and it’s literally all around you. While it makes sense that our environment has an effect on what and how much we eat nobody ever took the time to discover how to use that bit of common sense to actually help people weigh less Dr. Wansink has.
Slim by design expands on the “weight loss life hacks” uncovered in Mindless Eating by organizing your food environment in five separate areas: 1. Your Kitchen, 2. Your Workplace, 3. Your Grocery Store, 4. Your Favorite Restaurant and 5. Your Kids School.
In the book, Dr. Wansink provides real tools for you to begin re-engineering each of these areas for maximum weight loss and health. By dividing the book up in this way, he gives the reader permission to focus on just one are which avoids overwhelm.
I noticed that some of the reviews in this book were not that positive. Frankly, I am confused. One reader said, “I ordered this book based on an article that said it would give information about how to design a kitchen with slimming principles. That topic was covered in one brief chapter.” For me, it’s the fact that you could simply re-tool your kitchen for weight loss with the information in one brief chapter that's so amazing. My question to the reader is, did you take the assessments? Did you try the ideas? I did and, I actually lost a few pounds. I am a weight loss expert and I did not know the stuff in this book. The catch is you have to actually do some of it.
Each section is jam packed with cool tips and assessment tools to get you started in your own life as well as some ideas for you to begin to raise awareness in your community as well. The fact is that, like it or not, we really do have an obesity crisis in this country and this book gives you really simple tools you can use to help you and your neighbors lose weight without the torture associated with weight loss.
Listen, I grew as a fat kid. I was unmercifully bullied as the “fat kid” and, moreover, my early life choices were limited by my massive size. I wish my community, my school and my parents knew half of what Brian talks about in this book. All you need to do is make a few of these changes and you could change a lot of lives . . . including your own.
While this had good information most of the book was focused on how to get your supermarket, local restaurant or school cafeteria to make changes that discourage mindless eating. I'm really not going to go talk to my local Trader Joe's or neighborhood cafe about this book. If I worked there it might be helpful I'm sure but I'm really not the person who goes into a business and tells them how to run it.
In the end I was disappointed because I felt I didn't learn anything new that I hadn't learned in his first book and I would up skimming or skipping 3/4 of the book because it was about the restaurants, cafeterias and stores. I'd definitely recommend this book if that's your business but if you are looking for personal tips and information you're better off with his first book, Mindless Eating.
As a registered dietitian nutritionist and health coach working with clients on a daily basis, I see how environment plays a factor in health and weight management. Wansink identifies our food radius and five food zones where we likely spend the majority of our time eating or obtaining food: home, work, restaurants, grocery stores, and schools. Slim by Design outlines each area with in-depth discussion on the challenges and solutions. Each section ends with a scorecard - a way for the reader to complete a self-assessment. If I were looking at this book solely as a way to help me, the book would not be too relevant. I work from home (so the workplace section is not very helpful), don't have kids (ditto the school lunch room), and rarely eat out (since it's an occasional indulgence, I eat what I want). However, that's not why I bought the book. There's a much greater picture and Wansink outlines it beautifully. This is a book every registered dietitian nutritionist and health practitioner should own - especially if they're working in weight management.
I also want to make note of Wansink's writing style. Some people take issue with his humor and light banter. Get over it. I love it. It keeps the book entertaining while being informative and educational. It was over five years ago when I heard Dr. Wansink speak at a conference. So many points I still remember because of his humor and style of speaking. That's what makes points stick...and why so many can remember so much from his writings.
It's not about will power, it's about managing the environment...the many environments we face on a day-to-day basis. Be an advocate...for yourself, your clients/patients and others. Great tools in this book to help you do that.
Top reviews from other countries
The book's argument is that promoting healthy food is best done by stealth. Don't remove the chocolate milk from the school canteen, but make it more difficult for the children to reach than the plain milk, and they will then drink more plain milk and less chocolate. Have a bowl of fresh fruit by the til and asking each child, "Would you like an apple or an orange with that?".
While this book is not a complete self help book for anyone wanting to lose weight (it does not discuss aspects such as genetic
predisposition to weight gain, effect on health, how exercise can help/hinder weight loss, the stigma associated with weight, or steps to avoid weight regain), it does provide a really interesting read for anyone with a weight problem. Most people could find tips in this book that could make a valuable contribution to promoting their own weight management. In particular, anyone that runs a cafeteria, owns a restaurant, manages a supermarket or wants their own family to lose weight without them being aware that they are on a "diet", should definitely read
this book! For the medical evidence related to weight and diet check out The Weight Issue: -It's your genes plus modern living. How to make an individual weight loss plan based on medical evidence
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on June 24, 2021




